Criticism Books - Page 2

Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre (Meridian)

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

i disagree with the previous review. 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

I believe this book is fantastic, especially as a beginning point for understanding what existentialism is. The book has a well written preface that explains that existentialism is not really well defined, but encompasses certain themes. This book does a good job of taking a selection of those who share those themes, and introducing them here. I think it gives one a good representation and idea of existentialism, that can be studied more in depth later, by reading the full text of what is represented here. Very well translated by WK.

The Best Introduction to Existentialism 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This anthology of Existentialist texts is the best introduction to Existentialism currently available in English. Walter Kaufmann (best known to philosophy readers as the twentieth century's most important translator of Nietzsche) presents a selection of key texts from Kierkegaard, Dostoyevski, Nietzsche of course, Heidegger, Sartre and others, and Kaufmann prefaces the anthology with a magisterial intro. The most important piece included is the complete text of Sartre's early lecture "Existentialism is a Humanism," the most accessible and clearest exposition of the most influential phase of his thought. If you want to know what Existentialism is all about (or if you already know but want to own a great reference book of essential texts), this is the book to buy.

Subjectivity and Otherness: A Philosophical Reading of Lacan (Short Circuits)

Lorenzo Chiesa

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Editorial Review:

Countering the call by some "pro-Lacanians" for an end to the exegesis of Lacan's work—and the dismissal by "anti-Lacanians" of Lacan as impossibly impenetrable—Subjectivity and Otherness argues for Lacan as a "paradoxically systematic" thinker, and for the necessity of a close analysis of his texts. Lorenzo Chiesa examines, from a philosophical perspective, the evolution of the concept of subjectivity in Lacan's work, carrying out a detailed reading of the Lacanian subject in its necessary relation to otherness according to Lacan's orders of the Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real.

Chiesa emphasizes the continuity underlying apparently incompatible phases of Lacan's examination of the subject, describing Lacan's theory as a consistent philosophical system—but one that is constantly revised and therefore problematic. Chiesa analyzes each "old" theory of the subject within the framework of a "new" elaboration and reassesses its fundamental tenets from the perspective of a general psychoanalytic discourse that becomes increasingly complex. From the 1960s on, writes Chiesa, the Lacanian subject amounts to an irreducible lack that must be actively confronted and assumed; this "subjectivized lack," Chiesa argues further, offers an escape from the contemporary impasse between the "death of the subject" alleged by postmodernism and a return to a traditional "substantialist" notion of the subject. An original treatment of psychoanalytic issues, Subjectivity and Otherness fills a significant gap in the existing literature on Lacan, taking seriously the need for a philosophical investigation of Lacanian concepts.

Naturalism (Interventions)

Stewart Goetz, Charles Taliaferro

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Concise yet Rigorous 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book is truly a gem. It is short and sweet, and offers a great look at the heart of Naturalism. The authors have done a great job of examining philosophical Naturalism without the language being too technical. The chapters on Morality and Consciousness are by far the best in my opinion. The appendix on the argument from reason is solid as well. I would recommend it to anyone who is doing work in philosophy of religion, worldviews, and apologetics. It is simply one of those must-reads in philosophy.

A Meticulous, Yet Brief Critique of Naturalism 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 5 people found this review helpful.

This is a fascinating, yet concise book. At only 122 pages (including the appendix) one might assume that the book is too short to argue against a philosophical methodology such as naturalism, yet this is not the case. In fact, the brevity serves a greater purpose that I will mention below. Let me begin with a brief discussion of the title followed by some strengths and weaknesses.

A commenter above suggests that the title is misleading, and states, "Given the title, you would think this book would introduce and explain 'Naturalism.'" I'm assuming that the reviewer merely skimmed the book for one cannot deny that the book does introduce and explain both strict and broad naturalism. Outside of the final chapter (and a few very brief sections in the first four chapters) this book could very easily have been written by naturalists. The book actually excels in describing both strict and broad naturalistic worldviews, mainly relying on extensive quotes from some of naturalism's most well respected proponents. It then suggests gaps and logical problems within their methodologies. The book could have very well been written (with the few exceptions mentioned above) by a naturalist, and then simply replaced the final chapter with a naturalistic attempt to answer the critiques of the previous four chapters. Books like this are typical in every field, and thus I must contend that "Naturalism" is the correct title for the work, that the previous reviewer was unjustified, and that naturalism is the topic of discussion throughout. Now for some strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths

1. The language is easily understandable for the average reader. The book avoids philosophical language when possible, which is to its benefit. Occasionally the authors are required to use philosophical language, but I believe that this will not be an issue for anyone who has had at least an introductory philosophy course in high school or college.

2. The book is brief. This may be a weakness for some (as I'll discuss below), but for me added value to the book. The work is not intended to answer the questions as much as give trajectories through which the reader may find an answer. As such, in response to the brevity and the quality of the arguments, I often found myself taking the arguments much further, and also coming up with other arguments and responses. I believe the success in prompting the reader to think through the issues more thoroughly for themselves is due much in part to the brevity of the work combined with the strong arguments.

3. The argument is strong and builds throughout the work. As I read the first chapter I was not entirely sure where the discussion was headed. In the next few chapters the argument grew extensively, and by the section on naturalism and values, it was clear that the case being made was both extensive and strong. As such, I must agree with Robert P. George (on the back of the book), when he says, "Patiently, gently, but in the end decisively, Goetz and Taliaferro demolish the dogmas of naturalism." The strength of the argument has affected me personally as well. I'm someone who, though a theist, tends to side with non-reductive physicalists more often than not. This work has opened my thinking to certain forms of non-Cartesian dualism.

4. The quotes from external sources are usually long and shown in proper context. Too often in critiques quotes are taken radically out of context in order to make a point. This is not the case with this book as it is clear that the authors both understand and respect the naturalists they are critiquing.

Weaknesses

1. Many will see the brevity of this work as a weakness. The book may not provide all of the answers you may be seeking in response to the critique of the naturalistic worldview. I personally see this as a strength since it provides trajectories for self-thought, but others may see this as a weakness.

2. The book ends as a critique. The final chapter assesses some of the stronger naturalistic arguments against theism showing their weaknesses, and thus indirectly (until the final line quoted in another review above) suggesting that the best interpretation of the world (beliefs, reason, intention, causality, free will, etc.) comes through a theistic worldview. As such, a reader may be left wanting more information as to how a theistic worldview better represents reality than the brief suggestions within the book. Fortunately, the book does include a good (and current) bibliography including (among many others) works by Goetz and Taliaferro that with more specificity and depth describe the theistic worldview.

In the end, I must say that I truly enjoyed this book. Having never read either of the authors, I was initially interested in reading it as a result of the strong endorsements by John Milbank and John F. Haught, both of whom I highly respect. Now I am intrigued to read more by each of these authors as this book has shown that they rigorously make an argument, but have the ability to do this in an easily understood and readable style.

Introduction to Kant's Anthropology (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents)

Michel Foucault

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Editorial Review:

This introduction and commentary to Kant's least discussed work, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, is the dissertation that Michel Foucault presented in 1961 as his doctoral thesis. It has remained unpublished, in any language, until now.

In his exegesis and critical interpretation of Kant's Anthropology, Foucault raises the question of the relation between psychology and anthropology, and how they are affected by time. Through a Kantian "critique of the anthropological slumber," Foucault warns against the dangers of treating psychology as a new metaphysics, explores the possibilities of studying man empirically, and reflects on the nature of time, art and technique, self-perception, and language. Extending Kant's suggestion that any empirical knowledge of man is inextricably tied up with language, Foucault asserts that man is a world citizen insofar as he speaks. For both Kant and Foucault, anthropology concerns not the human animal or self-consciousness but, rather, involves the questioning of the limits of human knowledge and concrete existence.

This long-unknown text is a valuable contribution not only to a scholarly appreciation of Kant's work but as the first outline of what would later become Foucault's own frame of reference within the history of philosophy. It is thus a definitive statement of Foucault's relation to Kant as well as Foucault's relation to the critical tradition of philosophy. By going to the heart of the debate on structuralist anthropology and the status of the human sciences in relation to finitude, Foucault also creates something of a prologue to his foundational The Order of Things.

An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism

Madan Sarup

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A necessity for understanding our culture 4 out of 5 stars.
25 of 27 people found this review helpful.

Sarup's book gives an excellent comprehensive introduction to two of the most prevelant theories/philosophies of literary and cultural criticism. Poststructuralism and Postmodernism are not easy concepts to get a grip on, but Sarup's book will help anyone interested. It is a necessity for anyone who wants to better understand the culture that we all participate in every day. The book outlines the key concepts of the major thinkers of poststructuralism (Derrida, Barthes, Lacan, Foucault) and postmodernism (Lyotard, Baudrillard, Jameson). It deals with concepts such as deconstruction, psychoanalysis, the relationship between power and history, hyperreality, etc. I recommend it for any student of literature as well as anyone interested in the increasingly popular field of cultural criticism.

Just what it says it is! After consideration. 4 out of 5 stars.
13 of 17 people found this review helpful.

I first used Sarup's guide in my early days at university and, at the time, thought this a concise, lucid and accessible introductory text. Later, after coming to grips with the seminal works of the thinkers in Sarup's guide, I realised just how much was taken and used from their texts without any direct references or acknowledgement! I also feel however that sometimes Sarup's prejudices showed, in that certain thinkers and "thought" were given less attention than others according to his own discretion of who was siginificant and important in the academic hierarchy! His reading of Derrida is suspect, here it would be better to get your hands on "Deconstruction" by Christopher Norris as a primer to this essential thinker. Another gripe is the section on Michel Foucault! This is just not good enough. The ramifications of Foucault's work (especially with regard to feminisms, such as the works of Judith Butler and Susan Bordo, and David Halperin's text on Foucault and queer theory,"Saint Foucault"), are still being felt, as his genealogical and archaelogical investigations of power and knowledge, subvert and undermine hegemonies and discourses as we know them. This said, and all-in-all, Sarup offers a fairly comprehensive guide, albeit "very" introductory, of most of the thinkers and thought synonomous with postmodernism and post-structuralism.

Heidegger's Topology: Being, Place, World

Jeff Malpas

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Editorial Review:

This groundbreaking inquiry into the centrality of place in Martin Heidegger's thinking offers not only an illuminating reading of Heidegger's thought but a detailed investigation into the way in which the concept of place relates to core philosophical issues. In Heidegger's Topology, Jeff Malpas argues that an engagement with place, explicit in Heidegger's later work, informs Heidegger's thought as a whole. What guides Heidegger's thinking, Malpas writes, is a conception of philosophy's starting point: our finding ourselves already "there," situated in the world, in "place." Heidegger's concepts of being and place, he argues, are inextricably bound together.

Malpas follows the development of Heidegger's topology through three stages: the early period of the 1910s and 1920s, through Being and Time, centered on the "meaning of being"; the middle period of the 1930s into the 1940s, centered on the "truth of being"; and the late period from the mid-1940s on, when the "place of being" comes to the fore. (Malpas also challenges the widely repeated arguments that link Heidegger's notions of place and belonging to his entanglement with Nazism.) The significance of Heidegger as a thinker of place, Malpas claims, lies not only in Heidegger's own investigations but also in the way that spatial and topographic thinking has flowed from Heidegger's work into that of other key thinkers of the past 60 years.

The Odd One In: On Comedy (Short Circuits)

Alenka Zupancic

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Why philosophize about comedy? What is the use of investigating the comical from philosophical and psychoanalytic perspectives? In The Odd One In, Alenka Zupančič considers how philosophy and psychoanalysis can help us understand the movement and the logic involved in the practice of comedy, and how comedy can help philosophy and psychoanalysis recognize some of the crucial mechanisms and vicissitudes of what is called humanity.

Comedy by its nature is difficult to pin down with concepts and definitions, but as artistic form and social practice it is a mode of tarrying with a foreign object—of including the exception. Philosophy's relationship to comedy, Zupančič writes, is not exactly a simple story (and indeed includes some elements of comedy). It could begin with the lost book of Aristotle's Poetics, which discussed comedy and laughter (and was made famous by Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose ). But Zupančič draws on a whole range of philosophers and exemplars of comedy, from Aristophanes, Molière, Hegel, Freud, and Lacan to George W. Bush and Borat. She distinguishes incisively between comedy and ideologically imposed, "naturalized" cheerfulness. Real, subversive comedy thrives on the short circuits that establish an immediate connection between heterogeneous orders. Zupančič examines the mechanisms and processes by which comedy lets the odd one in.

Philosophy and Animal Life

Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond, John McDowell, Ian Hacking, Cary Wolfe

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Editorial Review:

Philosophy and Animal Life offers a new way of thinking about animal rights, our obligation to animals, and the nature of philosophy itself. Cora Diamond begins with "The Difficulty of Reality and the Difficulty of Philosophy," in which she accuses analytical philosophy of evading, or deflecting, the responsibility of human beings toward nonhuman animals. Diamond then explores the animal question as it is bound up with the more general problem of philosophical skepticism. Focusing specifically on J. M. Coetzee's The Lives of Animals, she considers the failure of language to capture the vulnerability of humans and animals. Stanley Cavell responds to Diamond's argument with his own close reading of Coetzee's work, connecting the human-animal relation to further themes of morality and philosophy. John McDowell follows with a critique of both Diamond and Cavell, and Ian Hacking explains why Cora Diamond's essay is so deeply perturbing and, paradoxically for a philosopher, he favors poetry over philosophy as a way of overcoming some of her difficulties.Cary Wolfe's introduction situates these arguments within the broader context of contemporary continental philosophy and theory, particularly Jacques Derrida's work on deconstruction and the question of the animal. Philosophy and Animal Life is a crucial collection for those interested in animal rights, ethics, and the development of philosophical inquiry. It also offers a unique exploration of the role of ethics in Coetzee's fiction.

The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism

Bernard Reginster

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Among all the great thinkers of the past two hundred years, Nietzsche continues to occupy a special place--not only for a broad range of academics but also for members of a wider public, who find some of their most pressing existential concerns addressed in his works. Central among these concerns is the question of the meaning of a life characterized by inescapable suffering, at a time when the traditional responses inspired by Christianity are increasingly losing their credibility. While most recent studies of Nietzsche's works have lost sight of this fundamental issue, Bernard Reginster's book The Affirmation of Life brings it sharply into focus.

Reginster identifies overcoming nihilism as a central objective of Nietzsche's philosophical project, and shows how this concern systematically animates all of his main ideas. In particular, Reginster's work develops an original and elegant interpretation of the will to power, which convincingly explains how Nietzsche uses this doctrine to mount a critique of the dominant Christian values, to overcome the nihilistic despair they produce, and to determine the conditions of a new affirmation of life. Thus, Reginster attributes to Nietzsche a compelling substantive ethical outlook based on the notions of challenge and creativity--an outlook that involves a radical reevaluation of the role and significance of suffering in human existence.

Replete with deeply original insights on many familiar--and frequently misunderstood--Nietzschean concepts, Reginster's book will be essential to anyone approaching this towering figure of Western intellectual history.

(20060315)

Chaosophy, New Edition: Texts and Interviews 1972–1977 (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents)

Félix Guattari

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Editorial Review:

Chaosophy is an introduction to Félix Guattari's groundbreaking theories of "schizo-analysis": a process meant to replace Freudian interpretation with a more pragmatic, experimental, and collective approach rooted in reality. Unlike Freud, who utilized neuroses as his working model, Guattari adopted the model of schizophrenia—which he believed to be an extreme mental state induced by the capitalist system itself, and one that enforces neurosis as a way of maintaining normality. Guattari's post-Marxist vision of capitalism provides a new definition not only of mental illness, but also of the micropolitical means for its subversion.

Chaosophy includes Guattari's writings and interviews on the cinema (such as "Cinema Fou" and "The Poor Man's Couch"), a group of texts on his collaborative work with Gilles Deleuze (including the appendix to the second edition of Anti-Oedipus, not available in the English edition), and his texts on homosexuality (including his "Letter to the Tribunal" addressing the French government's censorship of the special gay issue of Recherches he edited, which earned him a fine for publishing "a detailed exposition of depravity and sexual deviations… the libidinous exhibition of a minority of perverts"). This expanded edition features a new introduction by François Dosse (author of a new biography of Guattari and Gilles Deleuze), along with a range of added essays—including "The Plane of Consistency," "Machinic Propositions," "Gangs in New York," and "Three Billion Perverts on the Stand"—nearly doubling the contents of the original edition.